


all of the fear of the Lord I was given

by amonitrate



Series: aphasia [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-02
Updated: 2011-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/amonitrate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>takes place in Season 2 between <em>Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things</em> and <em>Simon Said</em></p><p>
  <i>"I'm okay," Sam says. "You're okay, right? You're okay." Dean's not sure why Sam sounds so unsure. Of course he's okay.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	all of the fear of the Lord I was given

"DEAN. Fuck. _DEAN_."

Dean's hand drifts to his head.

There's something grabbing at his shoulder, dragging at him. Spinning him around.

"Shitshitshit. Dean, comeon, man--"

He tries to shake it off and realizes his head is tilted back, he's staring up, his eyes dry and hot. He tries to blink and can't. There's a roaring overhead, makes it hard to hear anything else.

"Goddamn it." Right in his ear, and then his chin is gripped, dragged down and around and he's inches away from another set of eyes. They're not yellow.

Something pinches his earlobe, hard.

"We have to go," Sam says. Sam, not Dad, ‘cause Dad’s dead. Dead and for all Dean knows--

His swallow catches in his throat, and then he coughs. Bends over with it. The hand -- Sam's hand -- is still wrapped in the fabric of his jacket, at his collar, holding him up. Pulling him away.

Outside it's cooler and he follows Sam until they reach the Impala and then he stops where Sam tells him to stop. Sam's hands are patting at him, pulling off his jacket, tilting his chin to the side.

There are sirens in the distance. "Fuck," Sam says again, letting go of his face. Sam folds him into the Impala's passenger seat and Dean starts to fall asleep against the window until Sam jiggles him.

"No, Dean, stay awake. Keep your eyes open. Come on."

He tries. He's not sure why it's important, but he tries. He can hear Sam muttering to himself, a constant stream of profanity.

The back of his neck itches. He reaches up and Sam bats his hand away. "Don't touch it, okay? Not until I can take a look at it."

His eyes hurt from being open too long. He tries, but in the end his brother is just not convincing enough.

  
When he wakes up again at first he thinks he's in an ER but it turns out Sam's just pulled the shade off of a lamp and has it wedged between Dean's thighs on the bed, where Dean's leaning half against the headboard and half against Sam's side. He shies away from the light and Sam holds him still with a vice grip. Sam's got his face immobile and tilted toward the lamp and he's got one of Dean's eyes pried open. Dean tries to pull away again with a grunt but somewhere along the line Sam's gotten bigger than he is and he doesn't get anywhere.

"Hold still," Sam says, distracted but firm. Dean's eye waters and he can't see much beyond the yellow-white glare. Then Sam squirts something into his eye and Dean twists out of his grip, scrambles off the bed and hits the floor hard, the lamp toppling with a crash before it goes dark.

Sam follows him and grabs his wrists before he can bring his hands to his eyes. Pins him back against the side of the other bed.

"Sorry. Jesus, sorry, I thought you were out of it enough that wouldn't--" Sam stops and waits for Dean to quit trying to pull away. "Don't touch your eyes."

Dean blinks and everything is blurry for awhile and then things firm up. The bright spots burned into his retinas fade.

Sam's face is white and his skin is speckled with angry pink marks, like freckles. His hands, too, when Dean cranes his neck to look. Sam lets his wrists go and sits back on his heels. Dean can feel cool water leaking down his cheeks but he's not crying, it's from whatever Sam was doing to his eyes.

"Don't touch them, okay?" Sam says again, like Dean's five years old, or slow. "Can you see alright?"

Dean tries it out. They're in a motel room, but it's not the one they'd been staying in, back in... he doesn't remember where. But the wall paper is a different godawful flocked pattern and it looks like there's a kitchenette and there wasn't one in the last place. His eyes sting. He touches his cheeks and his fingertips come away wet.

"It's saline. I had to flush them out," Sam says at his look. "I was afraid you'd gotten ash into them. I should have taken you to the hospital but..." he trails off. "Well. You can see okay?"

Dean manages a nod. It stretches the skin on the back of his neck and he winces.

"Just a sec, I've got some stuff for the burns," Sam says, and disappears.

"Fuck," Sam says. "Dean?" Dean blinks up at him, and Sam's twisted into a pretzel in the narrow space between the beds, holding him upright against the bed frame, and Dean wants to laugh but can't seem to make his muscles work.

"Did you hit your head?" And his hands are moving over Dean's skull and Dean tries to push him off. "You keep zoning out on me. I don't see anything. Do you remember if you hit your head?"

Dean doesn't remember much beyond Sam sticking him in the passenger seat of his own car, so he just shakes his head. It doesn't hurt. Wait, it does, but not like a concussion. More like someone's been picking at his scalp with their fingernails and then rubbing salt into the wounds. He reaches up and bats Sam's hands away and feels a crisp spot in his hair. Another.

"Embers," Sam says, as if that explains anything, and then laughs, a thin sound. "You're looking a little raggedy."

Sam slings an arm around his back, hand under one of his armpits, and tugs him up off of the floor and eases him onto the bed, back up against the headboard. Dean lets him. His legs feel like they're filled with silicon. His brother pulls and prods at him until Dean's shoulder is leaning against his chest again, and the antibiotic cream is slimy and cool on the back of his neck, on his cheeks and forehead and the bridge of his nose. His chin.

"Doesn't look like any of these burns are too bad," Sam says. "Shouldn't scar."

Dean reaches up and brushes a finger over one of the marks on Sam's jaw.

"I'm okay," Sam says. "You're okay, right? You're okay."

Dean's not sure why Sam sounds so unsure. Of course he's okay.

When Sam finishes with the cream, he eases Dean out of his over shirt, runs his hands over Dean's shoulders looking for burns, but the jacket must have protected him because there's nothing. Sam keeps talking but Dean's not really listening any more. His head is heavy and he closes his eyes, lets Sam do the worried brother routine, doesn't bat an eye when Sam pulls off his boots and then his jeans and he doesn't realize how cold he'd been until he's wrapped in blankets.

"It'll be better in the morning," Sam says, and Dean nods into the pillow, already halfway gone.

In the morning everything aches, like his entire body spent the night clenched inside a giant fist. His eyes still sting and the back of his neck is raw and his head itches and his throat feels coated in something fine and gritty.

"Hey," Sam says from the other bed, his laptop perched on his knees.

Dean coughs and Sam reaches over, slides a bottle of water across the nightstand towards him. He downs about half of it in three gulps, nearly choking he's so thirsty.

The clock says it's five-thirty. Sam's fully dressed, his hair damp. He's obviously trying hard not to hover, but he's managing to do it anyway despite sitting three feet away. Dean feels like five kinds of ass and all he wants is a shower. So he fishes some clean clothes from his duffel and when he closes the door to the bathroom on Sam's watchfulness it's a relief.

  
"It was a fire demon," Sam says when Dean emerges.

Steam rolls out behind him, gathers at the ceiling and dissipates. Dean sinks onto his rumpled mattress, toweling his charred hair, careful of the pea-sized burns.

"When it left the host, it... lit everything up. Like the place had been sprayed with jet fuel."

He says it like Dean hadn't been right there when it happened. And it hadn't lit _everything_ up. It lit the ceiling up. The black demonic smoke had risen to the ceiling like it always did after an exorcism and then there'd been a flash and the ceiling had bloomed with flame.

But Dean doesn't correct him.

Dean's half afraid nothing will happen when he opens his mouth, but his voice comes out okay. Rough, like he swallowed charcoal. Whispery around the edges. "The boy?"

Sam shakes his head and something in his face relaxes, at odds with his words. "It burned him. Before it went."

Spontaneous human combustion. That's what had drawn them to the stupid town. Shoulda known better.

"Do you... do you want to talk about it?" Sam asks in the car. Dean lets him drive again, because his eyes are still watery and sensitive even behind his sunglasses and he thinks he could sleep another week.

"Talk about what, Sam?" His hands are wrapped around a paper cup of coffee, and they're not marked up like Sam's. He's not sure why. His face is worse off, though. His skin is tight like a sunburn where it's not pockmarked from falling embers and ash.

"You seemed... rattled." One of Sam's hands flails. Dean doesn't like how carefully his brother is choosing his words.

"I'm fine, Sammy."

"Yeah, I know you are," Sam says. "You're always just peachy."

And Dean shouldn't let that one go, but he does. Rolls his temple against the glass of the window and shuts his eyes against the glare. "You sure you're not the one who needs to talk something out?"

When Dean takes the time to glance over at the driver's seat, Sam's lips are pressed together in a thin line.

"Yeah," Dean says, his throat still aching. "That's what I thought."

  
"Did it say something to you?"

Dean rubs his eyes, out of habit more than anything. They're not sore anymore, just dry, like he's been sleeping with his eyes open at night. He doesn't think he is, though. Maybe he should ask Sam to check.

"What?" Dean eyes the kids at the next table. Only place he could find for lunch on this endless stretch of Oklahoma road was a Wendy's, and it's more crowded than he likes.

"The demon."

"Sam, you're going to have to be more specific than that," Dean says, sharper than he means, but no, he really has no idea which fucking demon Sam's talking about, because there have kind of been several. And they all like to talk. Especially to him. So is he just supposed to pick?

"Comeon, man. You've been squirrely since Sedalia."

Sedalia... Dean shakes his head, pops another fry into his mouth. They taste like the fries he used to get in school cafeterias at lunchtime. Same no matter where they went.

Sam's eyes narrow. "The fire demon."

Right. Sedalia, Missouri, and the distinct lack of honest-to-god spontaneous human combustion, which had been a bit of a morbid letdown. His recollection of Sedalia is a little fuzzy. From the way Sam's staring at him, he thinks maybe that's not such a great thing.

"Squirrely. That a technical term? You pick that one up in Psych 101, Sammy?"

"Dean."

"Squirrely? What's that even mean? How have I been squirrely?"

"Sleepwalking. You've been sleepwalking. For one."

Dean blinks at him, not sure he's heard right, 'cause that was the last thing he expected to come out of Sam's mouth.

"What?"

"It started after Sedalia," Sam says, and of course it did.

"You're shitting me." Sedalia was a week back. And Sam didn't think it was important to bring up before this?

Sam's face is solemn and unsure. "You used to do it when I was little. You never remembered in the morning then, either."

"That was... I grew out of it." By the time Dad started leaving them alone overnight. He thinks. He’s not sure though, and he’s sure as hell not going to ask Sam.

"Yeah, well." Sam shrugs. "Guess there's always a second time for everything."

"I ever get anywhere?"

Dean's actually curious, because even when he was a kid he never knew exactly what had happened on his nocturnal wanderings. He went to sleep in his bed and sometimes he woke up in the bathroom, or in a closet, or on the living room floor if it was an apartment, but other times his dad was still awake and found him and corralled him back to his bed, so it was like nothing had ever happened. Like it was some other kid who used to impersonate a zombie at night.

Sam seems to have given up on his food, starts picking apart his baked potato. "The first time you got all the way out to the car, but you didn't have the keys so you just sat down by the front tire and I found you asleep in the parking lot. After that I made sure the deadbolt was locked. You don't seem to know how to get the door open if it is."

And Dean doesn't remember that at all. But there is something. Underneath. He pokes at it and then just like that he's out of the motel room with Sammy in his arms and he's halfway across the parking lot to the Impala and can't explain where he's going when his dad catches up to him, grabs him from behind, grabs a fistful of pajamas between his shoulder blades and he's staring at his dad's mouth as it moves, but everything is silent.

"Dean."

He looks up and Sam's sitting across from him in the vinyl booth, too big to carry.

"Oh," Dean says.

Sam doesn't push this time. Doesn't ask him to explain.

Dean tries on a smirk. "Well, at least I'm not going for the weapons."

Sam doesn't seem to think that's very funny.

By the time they run into Andy and Ansem and the goddamn psychic kid thing starts up all over again, the sleepwalking is gone like it was something Sam just dreamed up. And Dean never does remember whether that fire demon in Sedalia spoke to him before Sam exorcised it.

What does it matter? Demons lie.  



End file.
